Opinion

As he is knocked off his bike for a third time, WILL SELF wonders what effect the pandemic has had on the reaction of passersby. The first time it happened, it was some young Trustafarian driving his dad’s Jag, and I lost my rag completely: ranting how he should learn to look in his bloody wing […]

Peter Trudgill on the dubious master of multilingualism. There are many things to be said about Ján Ludvik Hoch, many of them very bad, even though he was a war hero. But this column is interested in his linguistic prowess: he was a remarkable polyglot. Better known as Robert Maxwell, Hoch did not learn English […]

The case of Manchester United’s talented young winger Amad Diallo highlights awkward questions for football about the way it procures young players from abroad, says ROB HUGHES. Bill Shankly, the sage of Liverpool FC, once corrected a misconception of mine. “Listen son, coaches do not make good players,” he said in that familiar rasping Scottish pitch. […]

TIM WALKER on the director John Schlesinger, a man with just the right sense of perspective. John Schlesinger resided in one of those vast Christmas cake mansions in Kensington that signal to all the world its owner has achieved his wildest dreams. He couldn’t exactly claim to be a self-made man – dad had been a […]

MITCH BENN starts his weekly look back at some of the highlights and lowlights of recent days… UNFATHOMABLE STRATEGY OF THE WEEK The trouble with an inscrutable and mysterious strategy is that to the untrained eye, it’s indistinguishable from an entirely non-existent one. What is Sir Keir Starmer’s plan as leader of the opposition? Does it […]

Yoko Ono was always a disruptor, a transgressor, an interloper. And we should all be thankful for that. Looking back now, I never thought that John Lennon would grow to be old. But I always knew that Yoko Ono would make it. The Beatles had been manufactured to give off a care-free air, a boyishness that […]

A new book by Peter Oborne chronicles Boris Johnson’s history of deceit and how his time in Downing Street has poisoned British political culture.  In an interview with the American television network CBS earlier this month Boris Johnson sought to reassure president Joe Biden that he would do nothing to harm the Good Friday agreement. Johnson tried […]

Warm words about climate action are one thing. But Brexit means it's likely all we will get is hot air. 

What would one mean, and how do we achieve it?

Pro-Europeans thought it was wrong to leave the EU - but they still want to see the UK succeed. 

It is beneficial for Labour to take up the fight for proportional representation.

Brexit latest… Your weekly check on how Project Fear is becoming Project Reality. It has been another gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, as a senior minister accused the EU of seeking “petty revenge” – and then hinted that the government might ban imports of European mineral water and seed potatoes. The grandstanding […]

The news you might have missed from around Europe, selected by Steve Anglesey. A group of hapless would-be thieves were arrested in Nancy, north-east France, after a disastrous attempt to rob a friend’s stash of several thousand euros. Two men, one armed with a hunting rifle, aborted their first raid when a woman they did […]

A brilliant new novel shows how the city’s traumatic past still has a powerful hold on Europe, three decades on. A few years ago I emerged from the mouth of a tunnel onto scrubby ground next to a house just outside Sarajevo airport. The sunshine after the darkness had me screwing up my eyes, my big […]

Calls for Matt Hancock to resign following the recent court ruling against him over PPE contracts simply underline the problem with bringing such cases.  This week, a lot of people are confused – and very reasonably so. A court has ruled that health secretary Matt Hancock broke the law over Covid-19 related contracts. The ruling seems to […]

Our leaders are avoiding proper scrutiny due to the changes in the way politicians communicate during the pandemic. The social impact of COVID is self-evident. It has touched the everyday aspects of each of our lives, from simple tasks such as shopping, to meeting family members on Zoom, to (not) socialising with friends. Each of […]

Wales’ elections in May could be delayed – but when they eventually happen they will help make history. The scene was set for May 6 2021 to be a historic day for democracy in Wales. It would be the first time that 16 and 17 year olds would be able to vote in an election. […]

Following the announcement that the Pompidou Centre is to close from 2023 until 2027, BENJAMIN IVRY explores the history of the controversial building and its complex place at the heart of French culture and identity. Often referred to in French as Beaubourg, after the area in central Paris where it is located, the Pompidou Centre – with […]

Legislation is currently making its way through the UK parliament to repeal the controversial fixed-term parliaments act, which sets the period between general elections at five years and limits the prime minister’s power to trigger an election earlier. An earlier election is possible if two thirds of MPs vote for it or if the government […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the music of the Scottish city. A white teenager with a voice like a world-weary soul singer twice her age could only be a product of Glasgow. Lulu grew up in the city’s Dennistoun district amid poverty and violence, but she put Glasgow’s mark on the charts as the British pop era […]

TIM WALKER on theatre director Indhu Rubasingham, who provided him with a much-needed morale boost. It’s hard to put a value on theatre – just as it is on music, football, art or any other endeavour that’s prone to become a religion – but a value it undoubtedly has. That was brought home to me eight years […]

Our understanding of Covid, and of how to treat it, has grown enormously over the past year. But mortality hasn’t significantly fallen. In the early weeks of 2020, the NHS prepared for the pandemic however it could. Wards were labelled red and green to keep active Covid cases away from those not infected, where possible. […]

Once noted for climate scepticism, the Express has now launched a green campaign. LIZ GERARD assesses the extent to which newspapers can ever comprehensively switch their stance.  Under new management! It’s a sign we’ll be seeing a lot when we finally emerge from this pandemic, as collapsed enterprises are rescued or people decide they’ve had enough after […]

A year ago coronavirus switched from being something remote to something much more real. For everyone, that precise moment of understanding was different. Nicky Woolf reports. There is a before, and there is an after. Before was normality – going to the pub, socialising, hugging, shaking hands, not being afraid. After was isolation, despair, loneliness, sickness and death. […]

For the right, the appropriation of the term ‘woke’ is a means to police society. We should go back to its true, original meaning, says BONNIE GREER. The Superbowl halftime show features the kind of commercial breaks that advertisers dream of. Here the latest products are displayed, usually fronted by mega stars. Messages can be conveyed there, […]

New Zealand has attracted the envy of many European liberals, not just for its handling of Covid but – perhaps not unconnected – also its political leadership. Returning native Garth Cartwright reports back from a nation experiencing a very different pandemic. Imagine a land where the populace is enjoying a long, blissful summer; theatres, cinemas, […]

WILL SELF on missing the point of memes. ‘Meme’ is a coinage by Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most notorious – if not the most celebrated – of neo-Darwinians. In his brilliant exposition of the Darwinian worldview, The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins theorises that given environmental selection pressures may no longer be working on the great mass […]

It is an attractive idea, but flawed, says MITCH BENN. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago I suggested that when one is considering whether a given project has ‘worked’, one should bear in mind that its ostensible objective (ie. what the public are told it’s supposed to achieve) and its actual objective (ie. […]

The acquittal of the former president has exposed flaws in the first past the post system that are just as relevant in Britain.  The Senate’s acquittal of Donald Trump, though expected, has thrown up some uncomfortable questions for democratic countries where representatives are elected under a majoritarian system. It is now becoming very apparent that unelected, self-selecting supporters and […]

Our new football correspondent ROB HUGHES on the symbiotic relationship between Barcelona and Lionel Messi, its mainstay, that must one day come to an end. No player has better displayed the joy of football more sustainably than Lionel Messi. I first saw him at La Masia, Barcelona’s academy, when he was 13, and still feel […]

How can we get PR 'done' to reform our electoral system and British politics?

Europe's leaders are human beings - they are just as fallible as anybody else.